


Ashen Memories

by RoseMeister



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, focused on the stuff in A Better World, i love symmetra so much, this is just a kinda angsty character focused drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 15:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11443989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseMeister/pseuds/RoseMeister
Summary: The Favela burns. Not just buildings, wood and fabric crumbling into ash and smoke, no. The city’s heart burns as it's citizens are engulfed in flames, trapped inside buildings that they once called home. Home is a bitter word to use, now, now that they are no longer a shelter, a place to belong, but a prison binding innocents to ceaseless flames.Satya is haunted by past mistakes.





	Ashen Memories

The Favela burns. Not just buildings, wood and fabric crumbling into ash and smoke, no. The city’s heart burns as it's citizens are engulfed in flames, trapped inside buildings that they once called home. Home is a bitter word to use, now, now that they are no longer a shelter, a place to belong, but a prison binding innocents to ceaseless flames.

All Satya can hear is the screams. Logically, she knows there should be the crackling spit of fire, the crash of buildings that can no longer support their own weight, but none of that sticks, it just bounces away from her conscious mind, and leaves her alone with the sounds of humans being burnt alive. Really, it's that fact that let's her know that she's dreaming, that this is a past reality, a bad one, but one she has moved on from.

The thought should be a comfort, but, somehow, it isn't. She can't escape the flames and screams like this. Can't just be flown away by Vishkar, a thousand soothing voices murmuring in her ear. Can't create prisms out of light and destroy them, creation and destruction united in perfect symmetry, the repetition bringing her comfort until someone inevitably grabs her hands and forces her to stop.

She's just trapped. Trapped like so many people around her. She almost feels like she herself is burning. But she isn't, that's the worst thing. Satya is fine. Whole. Unharmed. She is surrounded by death and mutilation, watching smoke and screams choke the air, and she is unaffected, unmarked.

At the edges of her mind she registers Sanjay's voice echoing, repeating "So be it." Over and over. So be it, he says as he kills and destroys. So be it, he declares as he makes a mockery of her life's work, brings pain and chaos into the lives of the needy and desperate.

He promised, later, with quicksilver smiles and silken words, that the chaos was a worthy price to pay for progress. What are a few deaths, after all, if the lives of the many are bettered? Vishkar is bringing order to the world.

One death at a time.

There's a girl standing in the middle of the flames, the same girl who guided her when she was lost and overwhelmed by the roar of the crowds, the never ending press of people she doesn't know. Her face is burnt, half of it scorched a deep red. But still she doesn't move, doesn't try to escape the fire that still licks at her. Satya reaches out for her, but the girl steps back, far beyond her grasp, not moving as the she continues to burn, and she is melting, melting away in front of Satya eyes.

She snaps awake, and her lungs heave, desperate to be flooded with oxygen, but they are flooded with air heavy as ash, filling up her chest, burying her from the inside out. It sticks to her ribs, and she can barely move, barely breathe. Time has done nothing to heal her, and still she remains, in another country, another organisation, still struggling to drag oxygen into her body, prevented by the ash swimming in her blood. She is alone, alone with the memory of chaos still vivid in her mind. It rises, molten, in her mind, swallows it whole, engulfs it in a now familiar fear, a fear made all the more potent by the truth it brings, that she gave so much of her life to a corporation that while masquerading as a force for good, gave little to the world but the flames of fear.

She is safe, here. And that's the fact that hurts, the truth that impales itself deep within her breast. So many died that night, and so many more forced to live the rest of their lives marked by fire. The girl she met may have survived, but she can never return to the girl she used to be, can never even pretend to be innocent again.

And yet. And yet. Satya is safe, away from the burnt Favela, away from Vishkar, away from Sanjay and everyone at Vishkar who promised her that she was helping the world, that it was only through Vishkar that order could be brought, and once order had been established, happiness would follow.

But it was Vishkar who burnt Calado, and let the Favela burn unchecked. Vishkar who used chaos and pain to fulfil its own ambitions, and still promised her, lies as sweet as poison, that they were a force for good. It was Vishkar who took advantage of her loyalty, of her youth, to twist her into their tool.

And yet. And yet. Satya still wonders. Silently, almost guiltily, she wonders. Is it her fault? Does some of the blame lie on her shoulders? She failed to find anything incriminating on Calado. If she had, Sanjay may have been content to leave the issue there, use stolen information and secret deals to convince Calado to leave, and no one would've had to die. No innocents would have to be scared by a conflict they played no part in. And maybe, maybe then, Satya wouldn't be haunted by ghosts whose names she does not even know.

It's a futile dream, one that matters little now, no matter what comfort it brings.

**Author's Note:**

> I re-read her comic yesterday and it just about made me cry ;-;  
> I love satya so fucking much.
> 
> If anyone also wants to cry about symmetra with me feel free to message me on my tumblr [octopusdragon.tumblr.com](octopusdragon.tumblr.com)


End file.
